BACKGROUND
SUMMARY:
I am a UK based artist currently working out of London in the events industry by day and as an independent artist by night. I started getting back into the art world over the last few years (after a significant life event) and started making my art digitally to use as wall prints that could be bought and created my own online business where ‘Stargaze Arts’ was born. It is a tough saturated market and I found myself creating pieces that I hoped consumers would buy rather than my passions/letting my true creativity shine. The Crypto and NFT art world has brought a new opportunity for artists across many spectrums and has been a massive game changer. I am enjoying the supportive community that it involves; everyone is your cheerleader and wants to help you, a great group to be a part of. I want to thank everyone who has helped me on this journey so far in both the traditional and decentralised art worlds.
Now onto the LONG story if you want to read on…
THE BEGINNING: I was born in the UK in England to my Mother who is from Hamburg, Germany and my Father who is from London, England - although I am British, I consider myself a citizen of the world without borders due to my international family which also includes Italians (this is part of why I love the NFT space so much). I have always been into my art as my mum loved it when I was growing up, trips to galleries in London every month. From around 10 years old was when I really found my own love for it after studying the pop art movement at school. Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein really grabbed my attention as I loved the strong bold lines and bold colours. This is something that has hugely influenced me and defined my style today. In 2003 I did my art exams, during this time I also found a love for Franz Marc, particularly his painting, Blaues Pferd, or Blue Horse, created in 1911.
I focused on my family within my art at the time as they were what empowered me as an artist and my mum always encouraged me to express myself through art after starting to suffer from anxiety disorder at the age of 13. As I progressed to College at Peter Symonds, UK I decided to enter into photography - I didn't enjoy it as much as drawing so continued to do my own art as a hobby and started to work towards becoming an events manager and studying Media. I started University at Bournemouth in 2006 and made a career in events management. Being creative has always been part of who I am, and my career path enabled me to channel some of that into events whilst earning a living…
THE MIDDLE: My first job out of University was at the Royal Society of Arts in London (RSA) in their weddings and private events team where I was able to appreciate art everyday and utilise the platform to join talks and see the projects the charity worked on which is where my empowerment theme in my artwork really set in from such inspiring talks. I loved working there as I was on the doorstep of galleries like the national gallery, the national portrait gallery and many more slightly further afield.
From here I entered corporate events where my journey changed slightly and went down an unexpected path. Due to the expense of living and wanting to support a family in the future I chose this path. I continued to draw and paint as a hobby as still to this day I suffer from anxiety and find art a soothing way to relax and switch off my mind and find peace within myself. I have worked within financial services for 6 years in event design and created some beautiful artistic events and always lent towards hosting them within galleries such as the Tate Modern Tanks, one of my most favourite museums the Victoria & Albert Museum and unusual places like the Cutty Sark where I could express my creative talent more. I also put on music events and lavishly decorated these with themes such as secret garden and Brazilian carnival which kept reigniting my wish to go and pursue art full time.
WHERE MY PATH AND PERCEPTIONS CHANGED FOREVER -> The next chapter of my life came when I gave birth to my now 2.5 year old daughter. I went through immense trauma giving birth and went into the darkest place of my life where I almost died due to experiencing post-partum pre-eclampsia and major PTSD. I spent about 1 year recovering from this including many stays in hospital for severe anxiety and panic disorder which took a long time to get under control as I stopped being able to sleep. I was thankful I had my new daughter at the time as she kept me going and was my island of beauty and escape when I stared into her face of innocence. What lifted me out of this dark time and enabled me to find a new version of myself (as the old me was gone) was my art - I truly believe ART SAVED MY LIFE. While she slept next to me in her cot I would draw on paper with a pencil and just draw and draw and draw, it was all very abstract at this time. This is when I decided to pursue it as a new career with the hope for it to be full time - art is now a necessity for me not just a hobby, a part of who I am. When I left hospital, I began to draw images I thought consumers would want to buy on mass but still had some interest to me and started my own online print business where STARGAZE ARTS was born. This is still in existence now but then my attention got turned toward NFTs…
THE PRESENT:
In Jan 2021 I was introduced to NFT’s by my Father who is a 3D world designer after I showed him my latest artwork pieces and my interest in videos/animating after making adverts for my print business. He told me about the NFT world and I found it totally fascinating and the potential of it so exciting, we then spent the afternoon trawling through all the different auction sites, being wowed, amused and moved by all the types of art we came across. I began watching YouTube videos about the community and the various experiences on the platforms. As I was tech literate already it was straight forward and having worked in financial services for events I was also aware of the cryptocurrency market. I set it all up and bought my first ETH and watched twitter for a couple of months following the certain artists & hashtags.
Then in March I decided to take the plunge & haven’t looked back since, I have been in the community everyday for hours and observing and taking part, joining all sorts of groups on discord and clubhouse and learning so much about the ecosystem behind ETH and the artists who inspire me and support me everyday. I am just so humbled and blown away by the kind, supportive nature of everyone I meet and I never felt so part of something in my life. I’d love to be able to give up my day job and restart a career in NFT’s. I am very fortunate to have been able to sell my art to some big collectors in the space so early in my journey and I plan to be here for a long time yet.
TRADITIONAL ART
My signature style is my monochrome characters, pops of colour, clean bold lines and realist pop-art influenced style. The monochrome people are human beings, the idea is that anyone can identify with them in my pieces as they are not depicting a particular ethnicity, social background or political views. I do also use full-colour designs but in my more meaningful artwork, they tend to follow this format.
I started drawing when I was 13 and took GCSE art as mentioned above, I mainly used oil pastels as I enjoyed the dynamics and flow of this medium but I also enjoyed using acrylic paints and creating pencil sketches in black and white. Today I use digital mediums such as my iPad Pro and Apple Pencil or my Wacom with my Laptop and Adobe Creative Suite.
I love subjects surrounding stars, space, flowers, fashion, vintage chic, and femininity, as well as ideas and issues that I feel need a voice or are important to me due to my personal experiences in my life.
It takes me approximately 4 weeks on average to complete a piece of work. I do have to allow this time due to still working full time in the events industry to pay my bills but hope to be able to give this up one day. But my commercial pieces tend to be nearer 1 week as I tend to leave the backgrounds white in these pieces whereas my fine art is much more dynamic and has a deeper meaning and depth.
My concepts tend to change over time depending on what collections I am working on. Right now my focus is on 2 key series:
'Empowerment' Series:
This series is focused on a topic close to my heart... empowerment, compassion and awareness.
Story: My unique editions tend to have a meaning close to my heart or of a message that needs a voice. Whether that’s female empowerment, minority groups, breaking away from social pressures, issues of mental health or just an issue/topic in the world about a community that I feel strongly about.
'Industrious Women' Series:
My commercial work on Redbubble, Etsy, and Society6 is currently from this series as this is the market I am targeting with my pieces of art. The pieces are available on a print on demand basis and I create the items myself available in my Etsy shop. On Redbubble and Society6 they print art works on frames and canvas as well as lot's of other types of merchandise such as phone covers, home accessories, etc.
NFT & DIGITAL ART
I carry through my signature style into my digital art and NFTs and still use digital mediums such as my iPad Pro and Apple Pencil or my Wacom with my Laptop and Adobe Creative Suite. I have started learning a new skill of animating my artwork in various App's, Adobe After Effects, Premier Pro and also have started working on my own soundtracks. Another backend project I am working on is learning 3D design in Blender and hope to develop this skill over the next few years to bring out a 3D collectibles series, these will all be 1/1 editions still but will contain approx. 120 handmade items. I will not be using generative art/algorithms to create these and therefore this will likely be a project that spans years rather than months.
See my links for all my different platforms and socials, I am very active on Twitter and Clubhouse within the NFT space so if you have any questions you can find me there!
Platforms:
I am currently selling my NFT artwork on Rarible.com and Foundation.app.
Galleries & Shows:
I have three pieces with NFT Collectors now and have made many great connections including taking place in virtual reality gallery shows with I'mNotArt, who have recently opened their first physical gallery in Chicago, US. I took place in the NFTs.Tips events in Miami during the 2021 Bitcoin conference where one of my artworks was showcased. I was picked among 70 artists out of hundreds to take part in this which was a huge honor.
Lot's more to come in this space, there are still many skeptics but it is very early for this space and will be a big scene in the years to come, it feels great to be part of something so big at such a phase and will stand many independent artists on their own two feet outside of the grip of traditional art galleries and saturated market places.
